roemin around

The motorhome holiday this year took us on a round trip of 2150 miles to the majestic scenery of the north of Scotland. We did most of the NC500 route around the north coast that is being heavily promoted as 'the best drive in the world' and Scotland's Route 66. But we added on the Trossocks, Speyside and the Isle of Skye, all places we have not been to before. We timed the trip very well enjoying almost 3 weeks of mostly unbroken sunshine at the start of the trip, although it was cold at night and windy at times. Then a few very wet days on the west coast, followed by two hot days, bought the midges out and we retreated south with some bites. We managed to fit in stops at the Tower ballroom in Blackpool on the way up and the Lake district on the way back. We stayed at a combination of 5 Caravan and Motor-home Club sites, 5 Camping and Caravan Club sites, 8 independent sites mostly on the NC500 , one wild night at Aviemore and 4 Britstops going to and from Scotland. We ...

Rosemary shopped in the farm shop and I picked some fresh strawberries from the PYO poly-tunnels. They have thousands of plants growing in waist high troughs so PYO is really easy as the fruits are just dangling ready to pick. Yields and harvesting time must be 10 times traditional method on the ground. We spent a few hours at Shugborough, the NT property that belonged to the Anson family, later Lord Lichfield. Interesting place thats worth another visit when the NT have done more work on presentation of the last Peter Lichfield photography stuff. We arrived home at 4:00pm after taking a rather slow A5 from Stafford back to Croft. The total round trip was 2150 miles.

I had another fruitless 2 hours of fly fishing  and Rosemary found some interesting plants in the onsite garden centre before​ we left the nice little site at Sizerg. We found a Britstop and  NT property near Stafford for a final stop on the grand tour. We stopped on the M6 at a service station with an M&S and found some bargains. We passed the 2000 mile marker on the way. The Br itstop is a farm shop and soft fruit farm by a canal. I had another hour fishing and caught a roach whilst Rosemary made a traditional Scottish delicacy, macaroni cheese. The Belgium Britstoppers were surprised I did not want to eat the roach.